Fifteen years after a dicky knee forced him out of the game, former Mount Maunganui midfield maestro Grant Proudman has laced up the boots again this season for one last dab, as Sports Editor Kelly Exelby reports.
Grant Proudman can't nail down the reason for coming out of retirement after a decade-and-a-half off the playing pitch.
It might be because Dave Cook, his old mate and former kingpin during the Mount Maunganui club's halcyon days, cheekily asked, or because wife Gail pushed him off the couch and told him to get outside for some exercise.
It's certainly not because the dodgy left knee that forced him out of the game in the first place has miraculously come good - that much is obvious watching 50-year-old Proudman hobbling around a bleak and windswept Maramatanga Park, mopping up at the back for an under fire AFC Fury and getting forward for the odd surge.
Proudman, a brilliant midfielder for Mount Maunganui in the late 1970s and 1980s as they rose from insignificance in the Bay of Plenty leagues to competing with the very best in the national league and making the Chatham Cup final, pulled on the boots again for another crack, but age has slowed him, his knee clearly no better than when he gave it away.
"It's good to be running around again but it'd be better if the knee was good," said the self-employed painter/decorator, eagerly looking forward to a post-match beverage after almost lasting the distance in an uninspiring 0-0 draw with Taupo in the Waikato-Bay of Plenty Federation League.
"I had an operation when I stopped playing [at 35] but the doc said then the medial ligament was pretty much stuffed, although 'til then I'd never been injured and doubt I ever missed a game," Proudman said. "Now on Monday and Tuesday [after a game] the knee's swollen and sore but by Thursday's it's coming right, just in time for the weekend and another game!"
Te Puna-based AFC Fury, Cook's brainchild, won promotion to the Federation's top tier last season. The former Mount mentor invited his mate along to the club's end-of-season shindig where, depending on which story you believe, Cook either twisted Proudman's arm to come back or Proudman got caught up in the moment and volunteered his services.
"Me missus had been telling me to get off the couch and stop watching Coronation Street so I was half thinking about it anyway, and I would never have heard the end of it if I hadn't come out here with Cooky."
If the beaten-up knee didn't add a decade to his carcass, Proudman said playing alongside Connor Irvine, the teenage son of his former Mount Maunganui teammate Andy Irvine, had definitely aged him. "Andy and I had some great days together for the Mount and Connor's a real chip off the old block, he's just like his old man. Once he gets his head together he'll go far in the game," Proudman said.
Cook, founder, coach, manager, groundsman, chairman and general dogsbody at Fury, said the remarkable part of Proudman's story wasn't his comeback or the contribution he'd made at the Mount during the heady era where crowds of 1000 at Links Ave weren't uncommon.
The real story was the way Proudman, who Cook spotted as a 15-year-old running rings around everyone at a five-a-side tournament at Coronation Park, joined Mount when they were in the Bay league's lower reaches, sticking with them all the way to the national league.
"From 1977, when Proudie first joined me, through to the Chatham Cup final in 1986, I reckon he's unique, certainly in New Zealand and maybe even the world as a player who stuck with one club as we drove through seven divisions in eight years to gain a place in New Zealand's premier league," Cook said.
"Those were halcyon days for football in Bay of Plenty, not mirrored before or since and maybe even an impossible act to follow."
It's purely speculative but Cook believes Proudman's allegiance to the Mount might have cost him a place in the All Whites, an honour that teammates Greg Little, Declan Edge, Noel Barclay and Tony Ferris would go on to achieve.
"We were quite a precocious club in those days and invited [All Whites coach] John Adshead down from Auckland to take a training session when we were still in the lower leagues.
"Adshead has forgotten but he recommended Proudie move to Auckland, where the game was perceived as stronger, and join a national league club. Proudie stuck with Mount and was an integral part of our rise through the ranks, but I truly believe he could have played in the 1982 World Cup had he followed Adshead back to Auckland."
Adshead and Kevin Fallon have been out to Maramatanga to watch Fury this season, although Proudman had moved to Tauranga City when Fallon took over the reins at the Mount.
"Playing under Eddie Edge was enough. Eddie would run our butts off Tuesdays and Thursdays and we'd have a kick around on Saturday before the game, but he was always trying to get us to do extras like morning runs on the beach or around the Mount. It was fine for guys like Greg or Declan and a few others who used to turn up but I was self-employed and couldn't afford the time off work."
A box-to-box midfielder, Proudman was never a prolific goal scorer, although he got one in the net in Mount's 4-1 Chatham Cup second leg loss to North Shore in 1986.
"Proudie was a provider, great in the air and a positive voice on the park. Watching him play now takes me back 30 years and he never was and still isn't a problem, although there was the odd occasion on game day I had to go around and drag him out of bed..
"He's competitive but quite unassuming and I can't even remember him getting booked, although I'm sure some ref somewhere got it wrong once."
Proudman has held his own this season but doubts there's another year in his ageing limbs. He's glad he's given it a shot though, even if Fury and the club's spartan facilities are a world away from his national league days.
"It's been quite funny out here at times because you turn up and all these foreign guys pop out of the woodwork. Take today; Cooky asked me to stop in and pick up three new guys for the game and I don't know where he got them from but they didn't know a scrap of English. I tried having a conversation but they didn't have a clue what I was saying so I turned on the radio and carried on driving.
"I was handed a bucket of dirt when I arrived today to fill up holes on the field. I pointed out to Cooky I don't see Steven Gerrard having to do this before every home game at Anfield."